I got a email today offering me a free Smith & Wesson “Extreme Ops” knife. All I have to do is pay for shipping and handling. Apparently the company is Caliber Contests “The #1 Online Source for Online Gun and Gear Giveaways”. I usually trash email offers line this but I am curious if anyone else received this email offer.

Not me, and I've been receiving an awful lot of junk e-mail lately...

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Shooting Comfort is bilateral.

File 13, they’re phishing for info.

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James
On the Llano Estacado

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Pack light and cinch tight.

DON'T DO IT!
I got a similar offer for a tactical sling pack - just pay $6.95 S&H.
I paid by card and then two days later they charged my card an additional $72.97
Then one month later they charged my card a second time for the $6.95 S&H fee AND a second charge for $72.97
The credit card company reversed the second set of charges, no problem.
But then they made me jump through all kinds of hoops and spend over an hour on the phone about 3 times before they finally reversed the original charge for $72.97 - said I had waited to long to file the fraud report, and that they would be crediting my card as a "customer courtesy".

READ the fine print. This is a SCAM that relies on you "agreeing" to contractual terms that are buried in the fine print that they do their best to hide from you.

NEVER AGAIN. I don't care what they're offering or how good the deal looks. I'll never give them one of my card numbers again.

I've been thinking of getting one of those pre-paid cards that you can "load" money onto and put about 10 bucks at a time on it - just enough on it to pay their S&H fee then order the item. When they try to put a bogus charge on it the charge will just get declined.

Wait a a couple of weeks, then put another 10 bucks on the card, rinse & repeat.

They want to scam me? Two can play that game.

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Send lawyers, guns & money...

BSA, Stay away, I mean far, far away

Read all their policy's some of them will start charging you by the month. If you did not know you joined their club.

The probability is, that it is a ROC made knife, like most S&W accessories. Not for me

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Pete
I ain't no fortunate son

EXACTLY. They are counting on you "accepting the terms of a subscription agreement" - even though the "subscription" provides you absolutely NOTHING of any real value. But your agreement to their terms authorizes them to charge you a recurring monthly fee. Even though you will receive NOTHING of any real value for "subscribing" to their service.

We have all become so accustomed to "checking the box" to agree to the terms of the EULA (End User License Agreement) that now the scammers are taking advantage of that complacency to rip us off.

These scum-bag scammers are COUNTING on two things:

1) most people will "check the box" to agree to / authorize their fraudulent monthly subscription charges - without actually reading all the way through what they are "agreeing to".

AND

2) People will NOT go to the trouble of disputing or fighting to reverse their fraudulent charges.

FWIW, this has been a hard-learned lesson for me.

But I want to share my experience with others to (hopefully) save them from the same kind of credit card fraud nightmare that I had to go through.

It took a ridiculous amount of time and effort to deny these scammers their ill-gotten gains. I know that a lot of people wouldn't invest that much time or effort to fight this fight.

Unfortunately, that means that the SCAMMERS win more often than not! If we don't fight them, and they get to keep the money they have defrauded us of, then THEY WIN.

Unfortunately, that is one of the things the scam artists are banking on (pun intended). That it will require too much time and effort to fight them, and that most of us will just give up and let them keep the money they scammed us out of.

As Winston Churchill said "Never give up, Never surrender..."

FWIW, I am one stubborn so-and-so, and I refuse to let them get the better of me. Others may feel differently, and that it isn't worth their time to fight scammers. I disagree. If we don't fight them then they win - and as long as it pays, they'll just keep scamming more and more people.

JMO & YMMV.

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Send lawyers, guns & money...